Luang Phibunsongkhram, also called Pibul Songgram, original name Plaek Khittasangkha (born July 14, 1897, near Bangkok, Thailand—died June 12, 1964, Tokyo, Japan) field marshal and premier of Thailand in 1938–44 and 1948–57, who was associated with the rise of authoritarian military governments in Thailand.

Phibunsongkhram, 1957

Popperfoto

He was educated at the royal military academy, and in 1914 he entered the Siamese artillery corps. In 1924–27 he took advanced military training in France, where he became involved with Thai students who were plotting the overthrow of the absolute monarchy. On returning to Bangkok, he served as a major on the army general staff, and in 1928 he received the title by which he was known thereafter, Luang Phibunsongkhram, which he later took as his family name.

After helping organize the bloodless revolution of 1932, or Promoters Revolution, that forced King Prajadhipok to grant a constitution, Phibunsongkhram rose rapidly in the new, military-dominated government and came to public prominence by suppressing the 1933 rebellion of Prince Boworadet. In 1934 he became minister of defense and worked both to strengthen the army and to popularize military values in the fashion of contemporary Italy and Germany. On becoming premier in December 1938, he worked to mobilize the country (whose name he changed from Siam to Thailand in 1939), espousing ultranationalist and irredentist views. After the fall of France he provoked war with French Indochina (1940–41) to regain territories in Laos and Cambodia lost by treaty at the beginning of the century. Already pro-Japanese, when Japan invaded Thailand on Dec. 8, 1941, he quickly concluded an alliance with Japan. He declared war on the United States and Great Britain on Jan. 25, 1942. As field marshal during the war he promoted such modern habits as wearing shoes and hats and exhorted the Thai to follow their “Leader” in a highly authoritarian fashion. Though technically an ally of Japan, Thailand increasingly was treated as an occupied state. A strong, anti-Japanese Free Thai Movement developed, and, when the war began to turn against Japan, Phibunsongkhram’s government collapsed (July 1944) and a civilian government took power, controlled from behind the scenes by Pridi Phanomyong.

Postwar civilian governments lacked sufficient public support to maintain public order and economic stability, and they were discredited by the suspicious death of King Ananda Mahidol in 1946. The army seized the government in 1947, and Phibunsongkhram returned as premier in 1948. Almost immediately he commenced efforts to contain the spread of communism in Thailand. He suppressed the economic development of Chinese immigrants in Thailand in an attempt to restrict those who were members of the Chinese Communist Party, and he cooperated with the British-Malay campaigns against communist guerrillas in Thailand-Malaya border areas. During the Korean War he supported UN action by dispatching an expeditionary force of 4,000 troops. In 1954 he further allied Thailand to the West in the Cold War by helping establish the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), with its headquarters in Bangkok. After a brief experiment with democracy in 1956–57, when political parties were allowed and free speech encouraged, he was ousted by military colleagues who had tired of the corruption and inefficiency of his government. He then fled to Tokyo, where he lived until his death.

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...led by Pridi Phanomyong, a brilliant young lawyer studying in Paris, who became the leader of an organization of overseas Siamese students. He was closely associated with a career artillery officer, Luang Phibunsongkhram (Pibul Songgram), who was then studying military science in France. In 1927 Pridi and Phibunsongkhram formed the People’s Party, which became the nucleus of a revolutionary...

...a government scholarship to study law in France; he earned a doctorate in law from Paris in 1927. While in Paris he was strongly influenced by French socialism, and, with other students, including Luang Phibunsongkhram, he began plotting the overthrow of the Thai absolute monarchy. On return to Thailand the conspirators intensified their efforts, and on June 24, 1932, they carried out a...

...the army from the royal military academy in 1931. He was a close associate of Sarit Thanarat and, as commander of the important First Army in Bangkok, assisted him in overthrowing the government of Luang Phibunsongkhram in 1957. In the ensuing “caretaker government” of Pote Sarasin, he served first as minister of defense and then, briefly in 1958, as prime minister. When Sarit took...